Meaning
by ficdirectory
Summary: JJ struggles with memories of her past after a case in Wyoming. **Nominated: Best Friendship Fic in the 2010 Criminal Minds Fanfiction Awards at LiveJournal**


_This is the way it ends.  
Don't tell me it's meaningless._  
- Landon Pigg, The Way It Ends.

JJ remembered.

It was more than she wanted, and it wasn't what she needed right now. She needed to be able to walk into her own room twenty years later and have the thought stop her in her tracks as she picked out her clothes.

She wanted to be able to reach for a shirt and not shudder, and think of her sister the way she imagined her parents had found her. In quiet moments over the last few decades, JJ wondered about things.

Hotch knew about her loss. He even knew about the necklace that had been given to her the afternoon before her sister took her own life. But there were things he didn't know. Things nobody at work knew.

That she was home alone with her sister when it happened. That she had been working on an incredibly difficult assignment for her Language class, on the 100 Years War... 

* * *

She would have asked her sister, but she was as clueless about that kind of thing at seventeen as JJ had been at eleven. The research paper was enough to drive her to tears, and in frustration, she had given up and called her partner for the project.

"I can't figure this out at all," she insisted, trying not to make it sound like she was almost in tears. That was the thing, though. She wasn't book-smart. She tried as hard as she could, but some things were just beyond her.

"Just forget it. We can talk to the teacher tomorrow, and ask him for a different topic," her classmate had said. "You should watch The Wonder Years! Winnie's parents are breaking up. Everybody will be talking about it tomorrow."

"Who cares?" JJ had scoffed. "If I don't have to do homework, I'm going to the park."

"Jenny, get real. You're not gonna be cool at all if you don't know what's going on with Kevin and Winnie."

"Bite me. They're not real people, so why should I care? Besides, my sister watches. I can just ask _her_." 

* * *

JJ had never been able to ask her sister, because she had left the house to go play soccer across the street. She would find out later that the approximate time of death was when JJ was still home. On the phone. Talking about school and TV shows instead of saving her sister.

The shock had come first.

She had come home at sunset, in time to hear her parents screaming. The sound raising every hair on the back of her neck, and making her adrenaline race.

She had been halfway up the stairs when her mother came down and stopped her.

"Jennifer, no! Don't go upstairs! You can't!" Her mother sounded frantic and her voice sounded strange. "Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you say anything? ...Is that her necklace?"

"What are you talking about?" JJ had asked, anxiety growing in her like a fire.

"Your sister is dead! And you're out _playing_? Wearing her necklace? What is the matter with you?"

Then, like it was controlled by something else entirely, her mom's hand connected with JJ's cheek.

She had run, preferring to seek solace in the park with its soccer goals and slides and fading light. She curled up inside the bars of a dome-shaped jungle gym and waited for the screaming to stop. Waited for someone to think of her. To miss her.

But no one came.

That was the moment she ceased to be Jenny.

In fact, that was the moment she ceased to be at all. 

* * *

She came home hours later, chilled to the bone, as much from the cold, as the news that her sister was no longer there.

She found her parents sitting on the couch in the living room, pale from shock and grief. Without a word, she made her way to them. She sat between them, and leaned into her father, holding her mother's hand.

"It'll be okay," she told them honestly. "We'll make it through this," she promised, becoming JJ in a matter of moments.

She didn't choose JJ for her initials, but because Jenny and Janet both started with J, and maybe, if she gave herself the name JJ, it would be a way to remind people that she had a sister once, even years after she was gone. And she also chose it because those were Janet's initials, too, and maybe, if she tried really hard, she could be everything her parents missed in Janet. 

* * *

JJ had moved on. She graduated, and got an athletic scholarship and went to college to play soccer. It was the only way to escape the stares and the whispers in her small town.

It was the only way to escape the millions of times a day JJ heard the question, "How are your parents?" And the millions of silences, when she wished that someone would ask how she was coping.

No one knew how often JJ herself thought of suicide as a way to escape her own sadness. The only thing that stopped her was her own firsthand knowledge of exactly what it would be like when her parents found out, and she couldn't do that to them.

Instead, she sought out the free counseling services on campus, and started to focus on what she could give the world.

Then, it seemed like, she blinked and she was the communications liaison at the BAU - helping families pick up the pieces of their lives that were shattered by rape, murder or kidnapping.

And she was fine.

Until they worked the case in Wyoming where suspicious suicides happened on Friday nights in the same town. They had solved the case, but now, it seemed, her own life had been cracked down the middle. 

* * *

"I think I'm gonna take Henry down to Louisiana to visit my mom and my sister," Will said one night. "You should come, you've got a week off, right?"

"Uh...no..." JJ lied. "A case came up. But you should go. It'll be good for Henry."

"Okay... If you're sure..." Will said, giving her a kiss. "I think we'll leave this afternoon."

"Okay."

"Okay?" Will asked, still unsure of what to make of her behavior. "I love you."

Inwardly, JJ grimaced, hearing Janet's last words to her: "No matter what happens, I love you."

"Okay," JJ nodded, unable to say anything else. 

* * *

The house was eerily silent without Will and Henry.

Feelings warred inside JJ. Sadness that Janet wasn't here to be an aunt to her nephew. Irritation that this still had the power to knock her on her ass when she least expected it. And anger. Anger at herself for not being there when Janet needed her. Anger at Janet for taking herself out of all of their lives with so little warning.

Tears welled in JJ's eyes, and instead of giving in to them, JJ grabbed a nearby coffee cup and threw it against the wall.

It was afterward, when JJ stared at the broken pieces that she realized her phone was vibrating. She hoped to God it was a case.

She hoped to God it wasn't. 

* * *

"Hey, JJ," Garcia greeted cheerfully. "Where's my godson? I found the greatest thing online for him to watch. I'm sending you a link."

Under her breath, she hummed the Captain Vegetable song from Sesame Street, determined that Henry learn to eat and love veggies. Especially since he seemed to only be interested in eating macaroni and cheese and cookies. And that couldn't be good for his digestion. She ought to know. Those were her favorite things to eat, too.

JJ sighed. "Garcia, don't you have anything better to do on vacation than call your coworkers?" she snapped.

"I'm sorry. Were you busy?"

"No. I'm sorry," JJ apologized trying to steady herself with a breath. "Will and Henry are in Louisiana visiting his mom and sister."

"And you are?" she pressed gently.

Against her will, JJ sniffled, loud enough for Garcia to hear. "Lost," she managed, her voice breaking.

"Okay, listen to me. Stay right there. I'm coming."

"Garcia, I'm not really lost..."

"Still. I'm coming." 

* * *

Garcia let herself in ten minutes later. She took in the shattered forest green mug. The coffee stain on the white wall. And JJ curled up on the couch, her arms wrapped around her knees, looking stoic and determined.

She might not have been a profiler, but Garcia could sense grief. And in this house, it was heavy as a weighted blanket. Slowly, she walked to JJ and sat beside her. Wordlessly, Garcia put her arms around her, gathering her close.

"Oh, Jen," she sighed, and that was all.

In her arms, JJ shuddered, weeping silently.

She didn't let anyone call her Jen. Only Janet. But it sounded right. And somewhere, JJ needed to hear it.

Garcia's love was painful. She was the closest thing JJ had to a sister, and a sister was what JJ desperately missed. But it was for this reason that Garcia's love was also healing.

"I miss her," JJ managed.

"She misses you," Garcia said back, certain. She pressed a kiss to the top of JJ's head.

"You wanna talk?"

"I don't want to feel like this!" JJ exclaimed. "It's been twenty years...I should be over it! Why am I not over this?"

"Maybe, because you don't get over something like that. I think you just get through it," Garcia said, sympathetic.

"I wasn't there..."

"JJ, this was not your fault," Garcia said firmly, holding JJ's face between her hands. "You were a child. It wasn't your responsibility to take care of her. She was supposed to take care of you."

"But they all blamed me," JJ managed.

"But _I don't_," Garcia insisted. "You did the best you could. I know, because we all do in those situations. It's all we can manage, and no one can look down on you for that."

Silence fell around them, but Garcia was like everything JJ had ever prayed for, breaking it periodically, to ask how she was. Never letting go of her. Not until she was ready. 

* * *

It could have been minutes or hours later but JJ finally could breathe again. She let Garcia hold her a little longer and then leaned away from her.

"So, what kind of video were you gonna send to my baby? Nothing dirty, right?" JJ teased.

"JJ, are you kidding me? What kind of fairy godmother do you think I am? It's Captain Vegetable from Sesame Street." Garcia laughed, moving across the room and sinking to her knees to pick up the broken pieces of the coffee cup.

"No, no, no. You don't have to do that," JJ interjected.

Garcia looked back at her, holding her gaze for an extra second. "I know." Then, very deliberately, she went back to collecting pieces, and scrubbing coffee off the wall and out of the carpet.

"Garcia?"

"Yes, love?"

"Thank you," JJ said honestly. "I've needed that."

Garcia glanced up from the mess, holding her gaze a moment before speaking.

"No thanks are necessary. But you're welcome."

_Everything is dark. It's more than you can take. But you catch a glimpse of sunlight shining... Shining down on your face._  
- Andrew Belle, In My Veins. 


End file.
